Spirit, Help Me Understand

“Give me understanding, and I shall keep Your law; indeed, I shall observe it with my whole heart.” (Psalm 119:34)

We cannot understand God’s Word without an appropriate understanding of it. That is where the Holy Spirit’s ministry of illumination comes in. Illumination happens when God works in us to help us believe and understand the Bible. This never means the Holy Spirit gives us new revelation not recorded in the Bible, but He helps us understand what is already there.

There are a number of examples of this in the Scripture.

In Luke 24:27, Jesus, when appearing to the disciples after His resurrection, “opened their understanding, that they might comprehend the Scriptures.” He illuminated it’s meaning to them.

In John 15-16, following His ascension, Jesus promised to send the Holy Spirit to be our guide and to illumine the Scriptures for us.

In Ephesians 1:17-18, Paul praying that his readers would experience illumination -“…that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him, the eyes of your understanding being enlightened; that you may know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints…”

This ministry of the Spirit is one of those things that separates believers from unbelievers. An unbeliever may read the word and view it merely as a religious or historical document, but when a Christian reads the Bible, the Spirit guides him to see not merely history and religion, but the very words of God. And He helps initiate change through the words of the Scripture.

Charles Spurgeon talks about this ministry of God to us: “We would be abler teachers of others, and less liable to be carried about by every wind of doctrine, if we sought to have a more intelligent understanding of the Word of God. As the Holy Spirit, the Author of the Scriptures, alone can enlighten us rightly to understand them, we should constantly ask His teaching and His guidance unto all truth. When the prophet Daniel sought to interpret Nebuchadnezzar’s dream, what did he do? He set himself to earnest prayer that God would open up the vision. Therefore, if, your own and others’ profiting, you desire to be ‘filled with the knowledge of His will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding,’ remember that prayer is your best means of study. Like Daniel, you shall understand the dream, and its interpretation, when you have sought God. You may force your way through many barriers to understanding with the leverage of prayer. Thoughts and reasonings are like the steel wedges which give a hold on truth, but prayer is the lever which forces open the treasure hidden within.”

Next time you sit down to read your Bible, pray for the Divine Commentator – the Holy Spirit – to help you interpret what you read.